5 - Why is it so hard to push for a deadline?
episode 5 - Why is it so hard to push for a deadline?
If you're anything like me, you used to be great at deadlines! Undergrad you might have waited a little long to get that paper started, but you always clicked into gear and got things in on time....and then you hit grad school. I get into why it's really hard to get the energy to push for a big deadline - any why the tools you've used before may not work like they used to, but most importantly, what you can do about it to push in a sustainable way. Enjoy!
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Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar. We'll talk about why some of these things are so hard, and how that difficulty is showing up for you. Each episode has practical strategies to experiment with -- just because it's hard now doesn't mean it always has to be.
There's still time to join us in AcWriMo. And there'll be more details about that at the end of this podcast.
But for now, let's get into something else that's really hard about grad school: deadlines; and specifically finding enough energy to push when we have them. So if you're anything like me, you're probably in grad school, because some part of you was good at handling deadlines. At least when they're school-related.
Maybe you were good at studying at the last minute or spreading it out, but we got good at doing our work and producing it under time pressure. So why does it suddenly get so hard when it's a dissertation chapter? Or a conference paper or a journal article, or any of the other things that we have going on in grad school that in theory should feel pretty close to what we've done before, but in practice feel pretty far away.
So I think that pushing for deadlines is hard for a couple of reasons, but one of the big ones is that pushing hard toward a deadline when you're already working pretty hard is ...it's hard. It takes a lot of effort to keep pushing and pushing, because there's so much in grad school that you could be doing.
Even if there isn't a specific deadline, many of us walk around with this sense that we should be working on that journal article. We should be turning that seminar paper into something we can publish. There's something in a couple of weeks that we should really get ready for. The work is constant.
And it's not like it was on a semester or a term schedule where there were lulls built into the syllabus. If you want more work to do during grad school, you can always find it. So if you're already feeling that sense of "I should be working all of the time," a deadline isn't going to make that feel any easier.
Another reason that deadlines can really add some stress and pressure is because they reset the baseline for what we expect of ourselves during any given work week. Raise your hand (or don't, you know, it's a podcast,) but raise your hand if you've ever had a really gigantic Workday. You know, you were stressed out about something that was due the next day you got up, you worked for 10 hours, you finished it.
And you're like, "wow!. First of all, that was terrible. Let's never do it again, but also I just proved to myself that I can focus for 10 hours straight. So why aren't I doing that every other day?" When there isn't a deadline?" That's what I mean by resetting the baseline. A lot of us will pull out these kinds of magnificent feats of adrenaline-fueled achievement and then say, "well, I did it once. That's what I should be able to do every day no matter the condition." So we don't really get the sense that a push is anything special. A push becomes something that we expect of ourselves.
And lastly. I think that pushing for deadlines can be really hard because we don't always get a chance to take a break afterwards.
Or at least not a substantial one. There's always something else to do. You might be pushing for your own deadline and then have to turn around and get all of the grading done. You're working toward the end of the year, all of the deadlines tend to coalesce. And unless you really plan and advocate for a break afterward, there's always something that you could be doing that make it feel really hard to completely disconnect and get back to a place of feeling rested after a deadline push. So to go a little bit deeper into why deadline pushes might be a little bit tricky for you, why your expectations might be a little bit shifted, let's get into our questions to consider.
As always feel free to pause this recording, get your journal out. Maybe talk about it with a trusted processor or a friend, but here we go.
Question one. What reasons feel good enough for a push? Is planning a big push for yourself a special occurrence, or is it something that you do regularly? Put another way. How big does the deadline have to be in order for you to push?
Question two. What do you rhythms of work look like overall? Are you a push crash push person where you work 10, 12, even longer hour days for a couple of days in a row? And then you crash for as long as you need to? Are you a person who goes steady, steady, steady and then a push? Maybe you are an avoider who has other flavors of busy until the panic about something specific sets in, and then it's a mad dash to the finish. But what do your rhythms of work look like overall and how to pushes fit into that?
And our last question. How much room do you have or would you have for a push? Are you at capacity right now? Are you at capacity time-wise? energy-wise? support wise? How about your body? Your brain? Are you at capacity or how much do you realistically have to put toward an over the top, beyond your normal efforts, push toward a deadline or some other piece of important work?
So now that you have that own personal data about what pushes look like for you -- what you expect of yourself when you do them -- let's figure out how to push in a little bit more of a sustainable way. How do we experiment with what it feels like to push? Not as a matter of course, and not as something that we only do when we're panicked, but a tool in our toolbox that we can use with intention.
So experiment one. Define the duration of your push. So putting this another way - make a rule for yourself that you will not push without an ending. So the way that this might look for you is saying, "okay, I will push until this deadline, but then no further. I will stop doing my bananas hours, days, I will stop eating lunch at my desk after this push has done."
How will you define it? Is it toward a deadline? Is it a milestone of completion? I will stop pushing like this once I get a rough draft done. But as a side note to this experiment, I also encourage you to build a backup plan. So if you're experimenting with a time limited push, a duration limited push, it might be useful to make a backup plan. So what happens if the deadline's passed and you're not ready? How long will you go before you give yourself a break? If you don't hit your milestone for the rough draft, how much more will you keep pushing in order to get that milestone before you let yourself rest and recalibrate?
Of course, we're all aiming for best case scenarios, but it can be very useful to have a backup plan.
Okay. Experiment two. Change one variable for your push, but not all of them. Lots of people will sweep everything off the table for a big push. It can often be really counterproductive to stop exercising, canceling all your plans. You stop grocery shopping, you don't do the laundry. It can be counterproductive to do nothing but work during that season because suddenly all of your rhythms are different. Everything is new and you're making a million decisions a day!
Not just in your work life, but in all of the routines that you've kind of pushed off the table for this very specific season. So the next time you have a push. Try changing one thing at a time. Maybe you change when you write. Maybe you add a little bit of extra duration for those writing sessions. Maybe you add in more exercise before or after a work session, but rather than making a push about changing your schedules, your routines and your habits all at once, you pick one thing to help you get the most of what you need for that specific push..
So if you need more time, you add more time. If you need more energy, you add more energy, but you're changing one thing to see what the outcome of that experiment is rather than changing everything all at once.
And for your last experiment. Try and create a little bit of visibility. One of the hardest things, about a push -- especially a push in the sort of academic world where it seems like everyone is pushing all of the time on everything -- one of the hardest things about it is that it feels like a lot of effort and no one really notices, but you. And that that effort can be really hard to sustain without that external validation of getting that grant in, having somebody notice how much you're working.
So create a little bit of visibility for yourself. Maybe you make a sticker tracker and you add one for every 50 words that you write so that you can see the stickers fill up the page. Maybe you color in a square of an Excel spreadsheet for every pom that you do so that you know how many hours you've spent and you can celebrate it when you get to a hundred cells.
There are reasons that toilet training charts work right? We see the progress. We see the rewards. Getting in the habit of noticing and celebrating our own achievement can really help us get out of that loop of "this will feel real once it's accepted or once I get to this big external milestone," this is about cheering yourself on during the push, because the effort is what you want to reward and not necessarily, or not only the outcome.
This is a time of year when lots of people are pushing. So I am hopeful that at least some of the strategies that I've shared or the questions to consider will be useful to you. And otherwise, I hope that your work continues in a way that feels just a little bit more sustainable. Until next time!
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com, where you can also sign up for AcWriMo 2022, a free month of writing support and resources. And if you're liking what you're hearing, please subscribe, rate, and review to help other people find the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!